Page 4 of These Tears

Of course. He can’t shake my hand. He’s bolted down.

I let my fingers curl inwards, retracting with as much grace as I can salvage. But no sooner do I pull back than his stare climbs up the length of my arm, almost like a physical thing, until those glacial eyes meet mine and hold.

‘I apologise…’ I murmur, trying for steady – and failing.

Of all the bright ideas I’ve had in the past year, this one ranks top of the list – sitting across from a man accused of murder, trying to play this like a fucking Sunday tea party.

Clearing my throat, I take inventory of myself.

‘Call me Leah,’ I add in an attempt to ground whatever this is in something warmer.

Some of the static in the air eases as his shoulders relax slightly.

But it could be just my imagination.

He leans back into the unforgiving metal chair, his weight drawing a low creak from it. In the silence, the sound rolls like thunder.

Then he exhales, the breath rasping as though it has scraped its way out of him.

Glancing down at the clinical table between us, I reposition in my own chair. My heels scrub faintly against the hard floor when I fire off my first question.

‘Are you unhappy with me being here?’

Because I am – unhappy. With myself. With this whole bloody decision. With the desperation that had dragged me through the application, the vetting – all to keep my thoughts away from the wreckage of my own life.

And now here I am, pretending I know what I’m doing.

He keeps staring into my eyes without letting his attention wander over me as one might expect from a man. His eyes never drop to my throat or chest. He only steals the small, involuntary things my own betray.

A corner of his mouth tilts. Not a smile – barely even a promise of one – but his interest settles more precisely on my face, as though he has dragged a confirmation out of me without me allowing it.

Exhaling, I give him a humourless smile. ‘We can sit in the quiet, too, if that’s what you need?’

His gaze flicks unhurriedly to my mouth, then back up again.

The silence bleeds, rebounds against the wall.

I could still pack up tonight and catapult myself to Greenland, find somewhere cold enough to freeze every bad decision still brewing in my head.

‘Leah,’ he says.

My name. Just that.

And I was right – like the sound of burning logs in the dead of a winter night, his voice runs down my spine with all the gentleness of a wildfire.

‘That’s right,’ I say, softer.

But nothing else comes. And now I’m aware he hasn’t blinked for another while. His intensity starts to scratch at my skin.

‘My dad was incarcerated once,’ I mutter, just to puncture the air.

There’s a faint reaction when his breath snags, but he still makes no effort to move the conversation ahead.

‘I won’t pretend I know what it’s like. I don’t.’ I lift one shoulder, eyes on the table. ‘He was in for assault.’

I don’t elaborate on the reason. Crane’s brief contained almost nothing about the allegations, only that he had been charged with patricide.

I hardly remember that time my dad was in prison because I was seven. The neighbour was a violent prick. Beat his wife, his kids. One day my dad caught him in the act and hit him back.